BPCL to invest more than US$3 billion at two refineries

India’s second largest oil refining and marketing firm Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd. (BPCL) expects to complete expansion and upgrading projects at two refineries, with a total investment of more than US$3 billion, over the next three years.
Demand for subsidized diesel fuel in India rose by 10.8% in the past five months, according to R. K. Mehra, executive director of international trade, shipping and risk management of BPCL.
BPCL will spend US$2.6 billion in Kochi to boost output, from 190,000 barrels per day (bpd), to 310,000 bpd by December 2015. In Mumbai, BPCL will build a new 1.2 million ton-per-year (tpy) continuous catalyst regeneration (CCR) plant and a naphtha hydrotreater to produce more gasoline at the 240,000 bpd refinery. A separate project to replace one older crude distillation unit (CDU) with a new 6 million tpy unit will be completed by the end of 2014. The two projects in Mumbai will cost US$612 million.